I keep dithering about asking for a refund (yes, it's that bad). I should spend some time raising Cain on their support forums at the very least. My voice would be like a drop of water in an ocean though - everyone is complaining!

Yes - I should have known about Ad-Watch. I had not trouble with it in version 6, but when they went to SE it was rendered useless and it doesn't look like they've managed to remedy the situation (people were hollering for a solution to Ad-Watch SE right from the time SE was released through the release of 2007). The upgrade was cheap so I went for the Pro version again. Maybe I should have gone with an entirely different product. I wanted something that featured real-time scanning and automatic updates so that I could sleep a bit easier - my wife and her friends and family spend most of their time on Korean websites. Not to slander the good reputation of a fine country and its people, but the amount of spyware and crap that gets loaded in the course of an evening of reading Korean newspapers and viewing mainstream Korean televison online is staggering. I know my wife is not going to bother checking for and downloading updates daily and she is unlikely to remember to run her anti-spyware application, so... That said, courtesy of Ad-Watch SE's drunken behaviour I've been manually scanning her computer whenever I get on it for over a year anyway...

Right. I've written to customer support demanding a refund and await their response (there is NO information about refunds on Lavasoft's website - not encouraging). Sorry, for hijacking this thread, Curt

For those gentle readers who are interested, I've made an impassioned and eloquent post on this subject on the shitware forums. My artistic goal was similar to John Lennon's vision for the Get Back/Let It Be project - the artist with his pants down (now there's a graphic for you). Please note that you must be 18 or older to view the content of the posting as I took the forum rule to heart:

Well, about those security software options, you can use SpywareBlaster, SpyBot and Spyware Terminator combined to achieve maximum protection about ActiveX threats on IE, but ONLY in IE. With Opera and Firefox you must rely on realtime scanners, or use another of the options offered in form of extensions or plugins. But then again, they're more resistant to those attacks (but not watertight, of course).

About realtime scanners, my choice would be Windows Defender, as long as you opt out of SpyNet subscription. There's nothing wrong about it, except for its EULA, which it's cryptic and doesn't make feel good about it (particularly, the section talking about the submission of personal information by accident). Spyware Terminator seems to be better when it comes to catch bad guys, but some things about it still make me uneasy to recommend it. And of course, practice safe hex

Finally, if you want to pay, my choice would be CounterSpy, AVG Anti-Spyware or a-squared, before Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware is still good when it comes to some things, but the competitors have surpassed him both in scope of the malware, and in power. As a free scanner, it's still good for a second opinion. Ad-Watch could be replaced with either some proxy like The Proxomitron or Privoxy (heavy things when it comes to bandwidth usage, slowing down browsing) or use something like Adblock Plus in Firefox or Opera's Content Blocker. Might be something similar for IE, but I don't use it too much these days, except for Windows Update.

I have just given up on WebRoot Spyware. I have been a happy user of it for a few years and it gets good reviews however recently it has caused real problems on my system with no obvious way to configure different behaviour. First it seems to block some network activity that cut me off from my network storage centre and then the last update decided to change registry permission to the point that my whole system was playing silly buggers. I uninstalled it and not only are the system annoyances cured but it feels like a new machine - gone are the valium days and (at least for now) so has SpySweeper. Shame really - maybe I'll give it another go in a few weeks when it has been updated again.

In the meantime I still have an active Spyware Doctor subscription so maybe I will try the new version.

Well, about those security software options, you can use SpywareBlaster, SpyBot and Spyware Terminator combined to achieve maximum protection about ActiveX threats on IE, but ONLY in IE. With Opera and Firefox you must rely on realtime scanners, or use another of the options offered in form of extensions or plugins. But then again, they're more resistant to those attacks (but not watertight, of course).

Thanks for the tip, PhilB66! I overlooked that option, which provides protection about bad plugins in Opera. They should add one for Firefox as well, they had a list of questionable extensions for it at MozillaZine.

Just an update - I got a no-hassle refund on the upgrade to Ad-Aware 2007 so no harm, no foul from Lavasoft (though people do seem to be complaining elsewhere about their support/inattentiveness to refund requests, but no complaints from me!).

Let me add an update myself then. The guys at Safer Networking are quite clever, as they implemented what I suggested for SpyBot 1.5. Not only that, but they're expanding IE protection to Firefox and Opera as well. And what's best, they're redesigning the GUI! Now that's a really expected update from them.

Hmm... interesting. Thanks Lashiec. I just uninstalled Spybot 1.4 from an old Win2k notebook and installed Spyware Terminator (too early to say how I feel about it - I love the real-time protection but find the popups annoying...). I'll have to revisit Spybot when 1.5 is released.